Friday, July 22, 2005

Nyet!

Wow, what a night. Sox win, yanks lose, I win at Scrabble. The TROIKA, if you will. Oh, god, I love rubbing it in Kay's face, even if he never reads this.

Kay's Troika was again nowhere to be found. As yankee fans everywhere were SOUND ASLEEP, I watched as the yanks went with Proctor and Groom in the seventh, before finally being forced to go with Flash Flood Gordon (and yes, that nickname is referring to his tendency to barf when the pennant is on the line), who gave up the game-winning grand slam to Vlad. The Sturtze/Gordon/Rivera plan never came into play. To Kay's dismay, I might add. He sat there trying to figure out why these guys were so "tired."

Another key to this game was that I was on the phone with Reb for that inning, and once I knew that was good luck, (after the grand slam), I kept her on the line for the rest of the game. The only bad moment came when A-Rod doubled to start the ninth. At this moment, Reb admitted she'd left the TV! So I forced her to get back to the screen, and K-Rod, who I call Krod, proceeded to get the last three outs, despite the umps giving Bernie a four-pitch walk, when three of those pitches could have been called strikes.

Earlier in the game, I was pretty damn pissed. The Angels had a man on first, two outs, down by one. Guy hits a ball to right field which hits the ground once, hits off the wall, and goes up into the air. A fan reaches out over the fence, and whacks the ball with his glove. The ball would have landed on the field. I have the laws of physics on my side here. The umps ruled it a ground rule double. They do a close up on the dweeb in the crowd, and of course he's got a yankee hat on. While Scosia argues, unsuccessfully, they show the fan getting thrown out of the park. As he walks up the aisle, you see other yankee fans high-fiving him, proud of his cheating ways. (I also noticed two separate Sox fans sitting there as he was led out.) And seeing Shephanie's reaction when the guy hit the ball was sickening. He raised his hand, just knowing that this guy totally Jeffrey Meier'ed the ball, and knowing he wasn't about to admit the truth. But that's what he's paid for, I guess.

So it stayed second and third, and although the Repulsive Unit gave Orlando Cabrera an intentional fourth ball (no kidding), he got the next guy out to end the inning. Then the yanks hit two homers in the next inning, which made it even worse. Please note that Matsui's homer literally scraped the outside of the foul pole. But that didn't stop Kay from acting like he and Matsui together helped save the world from alien forces.

But it all worked out. Since Reb's TV was a little ahead of mine, I was making her delay her reaction to each pitch, which was quite hard for her when Vlad hit that mega-grand slam. Man, I ran all the way across my apartment and back on that slam. It was quite a moment.

Here's a good look into the yankee "fan" mentality. Guy in Anaheim catches a foul pop in the crowd. Turns back toward rest of crowd and holds up ball. Turns out he's got a yankee hat on. When crowd sees this, they start to boo him. Terribly, he quickly takes off the hat! He'd trade team loyalty for a moment in the sun. Oh, you don't like me? Well, okay, I'm not a yankee fan, then. You like me now? Granted, if he had taunted the crowd with his hat, I still would have called him a dick. But still, he shouldn't have been boasting about catching a really easy pop up in the first place.

I guess I shouldn't complain any more, especially on such a good night. But still, why wasn't Olerud guarding the line in the seventh? Why did Trot get thrown out at home by the shortstop, who was almost on the outfield grass? And Edgar, jeez. Great job hitting and hustling on the sac fly, but on the rundown play, come on, dude. I was watching on the computer, and at that point it was basically showing me a still frame that would stay on the screen for a few seconds before switching to a new one. In one frame I saw Edgar about to tag the guy out at second. In the next, he's sitting on the grass in foul territory and the guy's safe at first. Reb told me the details later. But in that moment when it was stuck on Chopper about to tag the guy, who was just starting to run back to first, I had a bad feeling. And I'm usually very positive. But these National Leaguers come over, and I just can't trust 'em. And if it wasn't for them dropping a pop up, we might not have won. But, we'd been getting a lot of bad breaks, so it all worked out. And I still feel as confident as ever. Nice to beat the All-Star starter. And we got to that Scritti Politte, but we should have had more against him. Also, I just wanted to unveil that nickname.

About the Scrabble game: It was a fairly high-scoring game overall, as I beat Chan 362 to 335. He came out strong with "tsunami" for 79 points. I ususally get at least one seven letter word per game, since I'm basically autistic. Today's was "singers," which got me the 79 right back. But after Chan went up 25 late in the game, I made an amazing move. I'd already put "city" vertically on the bottom left for a triple word score. So I thought about adding to it later if possible. Felicity, maybe. So at one point I realized I had "VLO" in my hand. I counted the E's on the board. Nine. So there were three left. I put down an R and a D to make "rod" alongside of city, knowing that if I then picked an E, I'd have VELO to add to "city," with the O going next to the R to make "or" and "velocity" on the other triple word score. I did get the E, and Chan didn't screw me up on the next move. So I did my special "velocity/or" for 50 points, giving me a 315 to 290 lead, a lead that I never relinquished.